SEE: THE MANHATTANVILLE SHEFFIELD DAIRY EXHIBIT

Manhattanville: a New York Nexus, Exhibit Hours: Thursdays 1:00–4:00 PM or by appointment, Exhibit Location: 560 West 133rd Street.  

It is dawn on 125th Street. Families are rising. The train booms overhead; trolley tracks run between the cobblestones and the early morning traffic. Workers hurry to their jobs at the local automobile factories, printers, and storage companies. The largest employer in the area is the Sheffield Farms dairy, whose proud billboard boasts the motto, “For the Rising Generation,” and shows a healthy child enjoying a glass of milk. Horse-drawn wagons emerge from a nearby stable building to distribute bottles across upper Manhattan. The year is 1929. New York City at the time is said to have “the best milk supply of any large city in the world.” But, this had not always been the case.

This exhibition examines the fifty-year crusade to turn milk from a “deadly fluid” into a mainstay of a healthy diet. The milk reform movement involved community activists, city officials, scientists and business leaders working together to find solutions to improve public health. Much of the movement’s activity and success occurred here in the Manhattanville neighborhood: LINK